https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00John Colehttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgJohn Cole2013-04-07 20:39:032013-04-07 20:39:03Your All In One Game of Thrones Mad Men Open Thread

@lamh35: My daughter and SIL, and most of their friends, certainly do. But i won’t pay the xtra for HBO (and the episodes of GOT I saw during a free preview weekend confused the shit out of me.)
And Dr. Who was even cheesier than original Star Trek; i couldn’t follow it or take it seriously.

@efgoldman: I didn’t watch Doctor Who in the 70s because of the cheese factor, and even some of the reboot episodes from this century are a big heap of aged fromage. (I caught The Runaway Bride recently: I liked Donna well enough, but holy shit, that villain was straight out of a mid-twentieth century B movie.)

I got hooked with the launch of the Eleventh Doctor, though. You might take a look at season 5 to get a feel for it. Effects are much, much better, there’s lots of fast talking and some genuine wit, and some decent acting.

Mind you, not every episode is a gem, and you have to accept some wibbly-wobbly timey wimey shit, but overall, I’ve liked this run.

You see, religion alone can only take a person so far. Religion can make us nice, but only Christ can make us new. Religion focuses on outward behavior. Relationship is an inward transformation. Religion focuses on what I do, while relationship centers on what Jesus did. Religion is about me. Relationship is about Jesus.

In order to become a new person, we need Christ. Only through an active ongoing relationship with Jesus can we become transformed and overcome the labels that bind us.

On a completely unrelated note from why more and more people are reluctant to self-identify as Christian, the author is identified as “the pastor of the nation’s second largest church, LifeChurch.tv“.

Cole: I wish to praise you for the little community you’ve created here. Because I am about to do something I never thought I’d be doing — I’m going to use an open thread to ask for tech advice due to a family thing. (Yikes…) And I find it quite amazing that I now trust you all so much that BJ is the most logical place to start.

Short story: estranged family is no longer estranged, due to my father’s recent bout with pneumonia. He’s recovering nicely, but it means I’m going to be making regular visits to the house for the first time in years. My brother, who lives with him, is the paranoid sort, and they have no internet. And I have no smartphone, which will put me out of touch for most of some days. And that could be the difference between getting a few days of freelance work or missing it.

So, what I’m wondering is: does anyone do semi-affordable wireless hotspot plans that aren’t linked to phones? Because I absolutely cannot afford a smartphone plan right now.

And if any of you offer me the endless amounts of ordinary, natural, human sympathy that are understandably proffered whenever family illness comes up, I will reach through this screen and dope slap you…

It’s a weird little byline on that story because you’d think that the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion would have NewEvangelicalAppDownloads.Com beat but I guess “church” means “Web site” nowadays?

I still can’t get over all the solemn Beltway stories in 2012 about how religious South Carolina is because of the large number of people who said they go to religious services “once a month” on that Pew survey; if I had gone to Mass “once a month” as a kid I would have been grounded 365 days a year…

@Comrade Mary: I am too young to have watched the original Doctor Who. I didn’t really watch the new re-launch either, but somehow I got caught up during the David Tennant years (mainly the Martha Jones and lil bit of the Catherine Tate companion years). After Tennant, I just haven’t really been able to get behind the new series, plus I got so much more TV on my plate anyway

Can@different-church-lady: Way outta my league here but maybe you can buy a refurbished low end phone and get a paygo plan for data. Install FoxFi (free) on the phone to create a hotspot. OTOH, some cities have WiFi…

@different-church-lady: My wife has had a pay-as-you-go Virgin Mobile MiFi for two or three years now, and we generally like it a lot. That exact device doesn’t seem to exist any more (not surprising), but there are some current equivalents. They have a coverage map that you’d definitely want to check if you’re going to be outside of metro areas and interstates, though.

Ah, yes. I’ve heard that conceit before. Some true believers disdain the term “religion,” which they reserve for all these other, shallow, pitiable superstitions and falsehoods. The Truth(TM) is far beyond that.

I have just watched the 2012 version of Total Recall, anybody who says that this is a better version than the Schwartzenegger version (and Ronny Cox as Cohagen) needs an ass kicking, I need to get my ass kicked for renting this.

@AA+ Bonds: evangelical Protestant believes that all of our problems would be solved if everyone became an evangelical Protestant. Next up, Catholic bishop finds that restoring the authority of the Church is critical if society isn’t to fall apart.

T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile both have pretty cheap mobile hotspot and pre-pay plans. If you’re just checking emails every hour, that might work. TMobile has a refub one that’s 52 bucks.

You’ll have to check if either of those carriers cover your area. And I have no personal experience with either carrier’s mobile hotspot devices to be able to say if they work at all.

Though I did buy a $120 T-Mobile Samsung Smart Phone. It has WiFi. And if I bought a prepay data plan it could surf the web. It works fine in big cities. Not where I live in the country though, which is why I prepay because I rarely use the phone.

@The prophet Nostradumbass: Yep, that’s the current equivalent of what we have. When we need it, be buy the $35 plan that gets you 2GB and one month. Even when I was using it to connect to the office with my laptop, we rarely used more than a fraction of it. (As long as you avoid streaming video and such, of course.)

@Mr Stagger Lee: I wasted valuable time on that movie when the kids were gone last summer. It’s not the money it cost to go that pisses me off, it’s the fact that Hubby and I don’t get to go that often without the boys. I forgot most of the movie before we even left the theatre.

Mad Men was great tonight. Slow to start and a little confusing regarding the date and some new people, but it was all worth it for the funeral scene and another wonderful gut-punch ending.